We Smoked Our Summer Catch 4 Ways... One Took the Crown
After a summer spent chasing salmon, our freezer was pretty well stocked, so we decided it was finally time to do something with some of that catch!
My mom and I spent two days making four completely different kinds of smoked salmon, from prepping and brining the fish to forming the pellicle, glazing, smoking, and finally putting them all to the test.
We made:
🐟 Sweet Chili Smoked Salmon
🐟 Bourbon Smoked Salmon
🐟 Salmon Candy
🐟 Cousin Izzy’s Smoked Salmon
And somewhere along the way, Cousin Izzy’s recipe went from his favorite smoked salmon, to his famous smoked salmon, and eventually Derek officially promoted it to Izzy’s Champion Smoked Salmon. 😂
After all that work, Derek joined Mom and me for the most important part: the taste test.
Did one take the crown? Yes.
But the biggest surprise was how different all four were and how much we genuinely liked every one of them. We’d happily make all four again.
And of course, Mom wasn’t leaving without taking some home!
If you’ve been following our salmon fishing adventures this summer, this is where some of that catch finally ended up.
If you want to see how we ended up with so much salmon in the first place, watch our Nearly 70 Coho?! video next.
Thanks for following along as we keep learning, fishing, boating, cooking, and figuring things out one adventure at a time.
It’s never too late to reinvent your life.
👍 If you enjoyed this one, give us a like and let us know in the comments: Which of the four smoked salmon recipes would you try first?
RECIPES
Sweet Chili Smoked Salmon
PRODUCTS MENTIONED IN THIS VIDEO
Towels we use for drying the salmon: Organic Cotton Flour Sack Towels
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Prefer to read? Here’s the full transcript from this adventure, lightly edited for readability. Timestamps correspond to the video.
Four Smoked Salmon Recipes, One Champion | Drops in the Ocean
Text blog summary
After a summer of salmon fishing in the Pacific Northwest, Sarah and her mom, Kathy, turned some of the coho in the freezer into four smoked salmon recipes: Sweet Chili Lime, Bourbon Brown Sugar, Maple Salmon Candy, and Cousin Izzy’s traditional smoked salmon. Follow their two-day process from thawing and removing pin bones to brining, drying, glazing, and smoking. Then join Sarah, Kathy, and Derek for the family taste test that crowned a champion, even though every batch earned a thumbs-up.
Video blog summary
Four batches of smoked salmon, two days of preparation, and one family taste test! Watch Sarah and her mom, Kathy, prepare the summer's coho catch with four different recipes, including Cousin Izzy’s much-loved version. Derek joins them to taste the results, and the winner gets a new title. Along the way, there are kitchen laughs, a fishing trip, and plenty of delicious salmon.
SEO meta description: Text blog
Four smoked salmon recipes from our summer coho catch! See how we brined, glazed and smoked salmon candy, bourbon, sweet chili and Cousin Izzy’s favorite.
SEO meta description: Video blog
Watch Sarah, Derek and Kathy taste-test four smoked salmon recipes made from their Pacific Northwest coho catch. Which recipe takes the crown?
Video transcript (edited for readability)
The transcript below retains the video's sequence and timestamps. Automatic caption errors and filler have been lightly cleaned; the dialogue has not been re-researched or converted into a step-by-step recipe.
Preparing the catch
[00:04] That one might be hard to beat. Yeah, it's really good. Cheers. Cheers. After an entire summer of salmon fishing, our freezer is pretty well stocked. So, today I'm pulling out some of our catch because mom and I are going to try something we've never done before. We spent months chasing salmon this summer, starting with resident coho and fishing all the way through the big fall run. There were great days, crazy days, and a whole lot of fish that eventually ended up right here in our freezer. And now we're taking some of that summer catch and turning it into four completely different kinds of smoked salmon. Then comes the really hard part, figuring out which one we like best.
[00:49] It's the end of coho season and today was a very rainy, windy day. So, we couldn't get out and go fishing. So, we're going to do the next best thing, and that is we are going to make all of our smoked salmon for the winter. So, we are going to make four different kinds of smoked salmon. And the first step is actually getting the salmon defrosted. The salmon is defrosted and ready for prep.
Cleaning and prepping fish
[01:10] I have the salmon we caught during the season here in the sink. And the first thing I'm going to do is get all the ingredients pulled together. And I'm actually going to get all the pin bones out of the salmon. This is my mom, Kathy, and she came over today hoping to go fishing. Hoping to go fishing. And since it didn't work out, she's going to help me make four different kinds of smoked salmon. Salmon. She never does anything halfway. If you're going to make one kind, you make four kinds. That's right. All right. Well, let's get going. All right. Sweet chili. All right. So, what I'm going to do now that these are defrosted is I'm actually just going to run my finger down the line here and get all of these pin bones out. All right. I'm just
[02:00] slicing them in smoked salmon size pieces, whatever that means to you. Oops. All right, there's our first one. We need to invent a salmon pin puller, pin bone puller, and a crab meat demeter where you can just throw it in and it pops out.
[02:49] The plan was to carefully pull out every single pin bone. That was the plan. These do not want to come out. It didn't take long before I started looking for plan B. Well, that's what I thought, but this one's not. This one's a pain in the butt. Grandma's over there trying the bourbon. Tasting. Tasting. Grandma's over there tasting the bourbon. She says it's pretty decent. So, I've done one and a half salmons trying to pull the pin bones and I don't want to do anymore. Too much work. So, what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to cut the bones out and use the small side for the candy and then keep the big side for the smoked salmon. So, if you don't want to sit for 8 hours pulling pin bones, you can do this, too. So, if you want to go the lazy route, let
[03:42] me just show you how to do it. It's very easy. So, you're going to feel for the pin bones. And when you find the end, the rest of this part of the salmon doesn't have any bones. So, go ahead and cut off the end with no bones. And now you can cut them into your pieces. Okay. Okay. Now, what you're going to do is you're going to find the line of the bones. And you can pretty much see them right here. And I'm just going to come on to the other side and cut down next to the line of bones. And that's going to give me a nice piece of salmon with no bones in it right here. And now I can cut it to the size I want for the smoked salmon. And then now you can see here's the line of bones. So now I'm going to go on the other side of the bones and just cut down a line. Okay. And then
[04:36] now this side I'm going to use for the candied salmon or Derek likes for me to um keep the pieces with the bones too and just go ahead and smoke those separately and then he doesn't mind. He'll pull the meat off of the bones. So yes, plan B officially won. It wasn't quite as precise, but it was a whole lot faster. And once the bones were finally out, I started noticing something else about these pieces of salmon. This is also really interesting. If you look at this, the salmon's actually, it's all coho, but it's different colors. This one's a lot more orange. This is a lot darker. These are all pretty close to the same. Okay. And then this is the one we have cut in strips for the candied salmon.
[05:23] And again, you can see some of these are a little bit lighter orange than these darker ones. So, we caught them in area 9 and area 7. And it's a combination of hatchery and wild, which obviously shouldn't make a difference, but I don't know.
Brining four recipes
[05:44] All right. Dry white wine. Okay. So, our first recipe is maple salmon candy. And it has brown sugar, kosher salt, maple syrup, black pepper, and it's optional to add cayenne. cayenne pepper. so this one's actually pretty simple. You just mix the sugar, the salt, and the pepper together. So, just going to put that in this dish and mix it. And then for this one, it says that you should cut the salmon pieces in about 1 in strips. This is basically salmon candy. So, you'll see I have the salmon cut into strips here and a couple little ends One thing we decided to do for all of our recipes today is to cut the salt in half. So, since we're not
[06:37] actually curing the fish, it's really just for flavor and also for texture. All right, this is all mixed up and ready to go. So, I am just going to cover up all the salmon. Just make sure all the pieces are nice and covered. They're all covered. And now this is actually going to go into the refrigerator for 8 to 12 hours. We are going to refrigerate all of the salmon overnight and we are going to get up in the morning and rinse it off and get it ready for the next step. All right, let's get this in the fridge. So the next one is bourbon brown sugar smoked salmon. And this one has brown sugar, kosher salt, bourbon, black pepper, paprika, and dijon mustard. So, first we put all of the dry ingredients together and mix it.
[07:33] And then I am putting the wet ingredients together. So, I have some bourbon, which I will pour into here. And I have some Dijon mustard. And I'm just going to mix those together. So now the first step is we're just going to sprinkle the rub all over the salmon. Try to make sure all the pieces are covered. Okay, think that looks good. And now we're going to take the bourbon and mustard mixture and just kind of drizzle it. And since we're making four recipes, we are labeling each one so we remember what it is tomorrow. Sweet chili.
[08:21] Next smoked salmon that we're making is called sweet chili lime smoked salmon. And this one is supposed to taste like Asian style barbecue. So, it has uh salt, it's kosher salt, brown sugar, soy sauce, the juice of two limes, chili sauce, garlic, and ginger. And this one's really simple. We're just going to mix that all together. So, I have the soy sauce in here. Here are the dry ingredients. And this one is probably the most unique. So, I'm actually making the smallest batch of salmon in this flavor, which will be this one. And so we are just going to drizzle this over. No matter how old you get, apparently mom is still going to make sure you didn't miss a spot. And
[09:05] honestly, she's probably right. The second I turned around for the plastic wrap, she stepped in to make sure everything was just right. Some things never change. Once the salmon was perfectly brined, we covered it, labeled it, and put it in the fridge with the other two. Now it was time for recipe number four. All right. So, this last recipe we call cousin Izzy's favorite smoked salmon. And basically, it's a recipe that we got from our cousin, and we've had it before. It's delicious. So, I'm hoping that when I make mine, it'll be just as good. and for this one, it has regular sugar, salt, soy sauce, water, onion powder, garlic powder, pepper, Tabasco sauce, and dry white wine. So, and this one's
[09:53] super simple also. You just mix everything together. We've had cousin Izzy's smoked salmon before, and let me tell you, it's really good. So, now that we had his famous recipe in our hands, there was only one question. Could we actually make it as good as Izzy does? No pressure. It's been 2 hours. We prepped the fish, cut it into pieces. My mom got all of the ingredients together for four recipes. Yeah, we marinated or I guess it's called brind. We brined and we kept them straight by putting labels on. We put labels on them. And now we are going to enjoy a glass of wine together and celebrate our work this afternoon and hope for the best. And hope for the best. Yep. Cheers. Cheers.
Rinsing and drying
[10:42] So, it's the next morning. You can see it's still dark outside. It's actually the last weekend of coho season and Derek's out getting the boat ready. We have some people coming over and we're going to go coho fishing today. But I started smoked salmon last night. And so that means this morning we really need to rinse off the brine so it doesn't get too strong. And since we don't know how long we're going to be out today, I'm going to rinse off the brine and then I'm going to put it back in the fridge. I'm going to dry everything off really well and then I'm going to put it back in the fridge and just let it sit in there um until we get back. Once we get back, we'll pull it out of the fridge and um we'll keep this process going.
[11:18] We'll smoke it later today. So, let's go ahead and just get the salmon. Let's take a look and see how each one of them looks and then um we'll get them rinsed. All right, this first one is the sweet chili. So, I'm going to keep my labels straight. So, we'll go one at a time here. Looks pretty much exactly how it looked when I put it in the fridge yesterday afternoon. All right. Well, let's just go ahead and start rinsing. I found these towels on Amazon. Actually, Derek found them for me, but um I can link them in the description. They are amazing. I've been using these now when I clean the salmon. I can wash them. Um they don't get any lint or anything on the food. So, actually really like them a lot. And I'm going to use them today after we
[12:05] pull this after we rinse the salmon and we pull them out. We need to have them dry. So, I'm going to use these to dry off the salmon. Time for rinsing. Oh, it definitely has a different texture. much firmer. I can really feel it around the edges. I'm working on the smoked salmon. No, you are. Yeah. You want to see? I'm working on getting more. I know. You want to see the first batch? It got the It's already smoked. This is the chili lime. So, it actually had a really good smell. It looks like it's smoked. I know. Isn't that funny? Yeah. After the salmon has been thoroughly dried, um I'm going to put back in the fridge for a few hours. So, I I'm just covering it with loose parchment paper.
[12:54] Um we don't want to seal it because we're we don't want to be able to trap moisture. We're trying to let it dry out a little bit. Putting my label back on since I'm making so many versions. And then this is going to go back into the refrigerator. So, kind of looks like this. All right. Well, we're supposed to be getting ready to go and the fog came in. I'll show you what it looks like. Looks like that. Oh, there's a spider crawling on the camera. Oh, geesh. All right. So, we're going to have to wait for the sun to come up and hopefully this fog rises. After brining overnight, each piece gets rinsed to remove the excess salt and seasoning, then dried really well. Now comes an important part of
[13:47] smoking salmon. We put everything back in the fridge uncovered so a pellicle can form. That's the slightly tacky surface that helps the smoke stick to the salmon and gives you that beautiful smoked finish. So, while these dried out, we went fishing.
Smoking and glazing
[14:15] We just got back from coho fishing. We actually ended up being out there a lot longer than um we were planning because it was a pretty slow bite. So, we got the fish out of the fridge and we realized that we actually have three of them need a glaze added. So, we just got the smoker going. You can see kind of starting to smoke. And now we're going to get these glazes put onto the salmon. This is where making four different recipes at the same time started to get a little complicated. Three of them needed different glazes during the smoking process at different times. So now we had to figure out which salmon went on which rack, which glaze went with which one, and somehow make sure we didn't mix any of them up.
[15:00] Suddenly labeling everything felt like a very good idea. And this one every hour. So we'll start by putting some maple syrup on this one and getting it on the bottom rack. Here's what it looks like. So here we have the maple candy. It's been in the refrigerator for a few hours and then now we've had it sitting on the counter for about an hour. So we are going to brush it with some maple syrup. All
[15:48] right. Maple candy. Okay, sweet chili. Bourbon is there. All right, all of our smoked salmon is in the smoker. And now we will start to get our glazes together. While I was mixing up the glazes, my brother called from Hong Kong. Of course, we had to show him what we were working on. And apparently our summer fishing videos are giving him a little bit of fishing envy. Look, Jacob, you're on my YouTube channel. I am. Yeah. Say hi. Oh, hello. Hello. My brother that's in Hong Kong. I don't get to fish like you guys. I know. I know.
[16:37] Well, come on over and you can come on over and you can. One of the fun parts was getting to share a little of the process with my brother all the way in Hong Kong. He kept mom company while I worked on getting the right glaze on the right salmon. All right, we've got the glazes across all of the fish. And there they are. And now it's going to go back in for one more hour and then all this will get to come out and be done. All right, it's late. We just got them off the smoker and I'm in my robe because I'm cold. This is the Izzy salmon. And we've got the salmon candy, the sweet chili,
[17:31] and the bourbon maple. So, we will try these tomorrow. and see how they taste.
Taste testing results
[17:43] Once everything had cooled, we vacuum sealed most of the salmon so we can enjoy it later. Although, obviously, we had to save some for the taste test. Are you guys ready to try this smoked salmon? I'm so ready. Smoked salmon is my favorite. All right, we have bourbon, candy, Izzy's famous smoked salmon, and sweet chili. how about we try the candy? Or should we do that for dessert? Yeah, that's fine. Let's I don't think salmon is dessert. Let's end it with Izzy's because we know what Izzy's tastes like. So, we can kind of get a taste and then close it off with that. Okay. So, I guess sweet chili first. Start with sweets. We'll just come around the plate like this. Okay,
[18:30] after 2 days of brining, drying, smoking, and glazing, we finally got to the important part, the taste test. And we had four very different salmons to work our way through. That one might be hard to beat. Yeah, it's really good. One down. And apparently, we'd already set the bar pretty high. Mmm. That's pretty darn good, too. That was pretty good. Then we tried the next one, and this wasn't getting any easier. I actually really like that. Three recipes in and somehow we still hadn't found one we didn't like.
[19:20] And finally, it was time for cousin Izzy's recipe. Although somewhere along the way, Izzy's favorite smoked salmon became his famous smoked salmon. And now Derek had officially promoted it to champion. No pressure, Izzy. All right, Izzy's champion here. Let's see if he got knocked off. Okay, we ready? Yep. All right, let's give this try. Well, I don't think the champion's been unseated. Got the best ones. Yeah, I think that's still there. Mm-hmm. They're all really good flavors, but the texture on that one's totally different. Mm-hmm. Well, softer. This one was marinated in soy sauce and the white wine. Remember was the the liquorized the And then these were all dry rubbed.
[20:05] All right. I think I it finish it off with some candy because that's what I asked for. Well, I'm having more of aies. Okay. Okay, so Izzy may have earned that championship title, but here's the problem. We honestly loved all four. They were completely different, and we'd happily make every single one of them again, which means after all of this, we still can't really pick just one favorite. So, honestly, what do you think? They're all pretty good. I think you did a great job. I mean, this is what I asked for, so this is what I wanted. Smoked candy. Smoked salmon candy. I wanted the salmon candy. but I was really hesitant for the other two flavors, especially sweet chili, because I'm
[20:57] not a super fan of anything sweet chili, but they all turned out really good. Yeah, I think so, too. Mm-hmm. So, if you want to follow along as we make things that we catch right out of the Puget Sound, make sure you subscribe. We have a lot more coming. Have a good one. Bye. Well, I think we did great. I give all four of them a thumbs up and I can't even pick which one I like best. Yep. I feel the same way. So, you going to take some home? Oh, you better believe it. Okay, good. All right. We took a leap and bought a fixer upper on the Hood Canal. And an empty dock meant one thing. We needed a boat. Now we're building our dream home and our dream life, one adventure at a time.
Recipes featured
Also mentioned: Lint-free drying towels, as linked in the video description.